Arrows place ninth in Weiss Invitational

The good news for Ashland High School's boys golf team is that coach Steve Paramore and his Arrows are on the same page.

The bad news is, at least Thursday at the 40th Weiss Honorary Invitational, it was the wrong page.

Ashland finished in a tie for ninth place in the 17-team Weiss Invite Thursday at the Country Club of Ashland, carding a team score of 332.

"The course was playing a little bit difficult today," said Ashland coach Steve Paramore. "I think that they can play a whole lot better. It's still really early in the season, only our second tournament. We're just kind of getting the kinks out.

"I was a little disappointed because these kids play here all the time, and most of them are members here. I saw a lot of positive holes ... but I heard some big numbers out there."

Sitting at their table waiting for results to come in, the Arrows knew they could have done better -- something Paramore liked to hear.

"I'm kind of one of those guys that tries to pump confident talk into them," said Paramore. "I don't want to bring them down. They're already down because they had a big number. They've just got to be able to learn to forget about it and go play golf."

On the par-72 CC of A course, the home team couldn't take advantage of its familiarity with it. Eric Dowiatt paced the Arrows with a round of 81, followed by Keith Brooks (82), Nick Adkins (82), Kyle Hauenstein (87), Marc Matteson (88) and Stephen Sinchok (89).

"We had high hopes coming on," Dowiatt said. "It could have been a whole different day. You can't expect a lot. We're young.

"(But) that's a wakeup call. Hopefully, we step it up and play better."

Paramore said, "I think this is my lineup, but I don't know. Maybe I have to move some things around."

"He's just a tremendous guy," Paramore said. "He's always been around our program as long as I can remember. He's just always great about having us out here. You couldn't ask for a better guy. He's very deserving."